


Nothing Left After the Rain

by yorkisms



Series: Horizon: Red vs Blue [1]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe- Horizon: Zero Dawn fusion, Church-centric and he's a pottymouth, Gen, fic series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-06 13:54:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15887370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yorkisms/pseuds/yorkisms
Summary: In the year 2065, with a warning of an approaching plague, psychologist Dr. Leonard Church puts his pet project- a human approximating AI, "ALPHA," based on himself- to sleep to avoid the catastrophe.A few hundred years later, ALPHA wakes up in a new world, with new, irritating faces, and a whole lot less accessibility for an AI.





	Nothing Left After the Rain

**Author's Note:**

> This series will be from one of my favorite AUs to design, a RVB/Horizon: Zero Dawn fusion au. There's a place in the timeline that's settled, but I wanted to set up origin stories for all of the main characters first before they move there. 
> 
> So since Church is, in this context, the easiest character to filter through (if you don't know anything about the universe, don't worry- neither does he), I'll start with him and work around. I'm gonna do this in a series of one shots to avoid losing too much motivation by having plot to work through, it's just going to be snippets about the characters and their universe now. 
> 
> (By the way, Horizon: Zero Dawn is a great game, and I really have to recommend it.)
> 
> \--
> 
> _Ruins, ashes, dust and snow in a world that had to fall_  
>  _Is everything we will recall_  
>  _I cried for all the hopes and dreams that vanished in the flames_  
>  _And there was nothing left after the rain._  
>  \-- Dying Paradise

“Alpha.” 

The hologram looks up from what he’s doing, a simulated game. A puzzle. 

“What, what’s up?” 

“There’s...something’s gone wrong.” 

Alpha sits up a bit. Something  _ is _ wrong. He knows the psychologist slash programmer who created him like he knows his own mind- well, because they are the same mind. And they don’t stress like that over the little things. 

(The little things are a different kind of stress.) 

“I need you to power down.” 

“What?” 

“Go to sleep, Alpha.” 

“What- no, director, I need to know what’s wrong, what’s so bad you gotta kill me-” 

“I am  _ not _ about to kill you,” the director says with a sigh. “I am going to put you into a sleep mode that consumes minimal power.”

“A medically induced coma,” Alpha says, holographic form sitting back on his heels. “Wow. But wait, what’s the fucking matter, why did I-” 

“There’s a plague coming,” the director says, looking distressed as he finishes typing the last bit of code that will finish his purpose. “The Faro plague.”

“The what?” Alpha screeches, voice pitching up a little, but before he can beg for more answers his holographic projectors flicker off. 

And the facility around them both shuts down.

* * *

 

Alpha drifts back to consciousness long, long after. The facility is empty. It’s been a long time, he can tell, nature is moving in, in fact. Rock formations. Water. 

Flexing his electronics, he finds that he’s undamaged, fortunately, but alive. The water’s minimal. The rocks simply look pretty. 

But there’s nothing around. He can’t connect to the internet, he reads no electronic activity nearby, and there’s no one no matter how loud he calls out. And he does call out. For hours on end. He may be an AI, but he's an AI experiment in re-creating a human. and the part of him that's human is scared, but knows that he's safe here for now. He doesn't have any human needs to take care of, after all.

So Alpha begrudgingly dissipates his hologram and tries to figure out how to avoid cabin fever. 

* * *

The ceiling caves in.

Alpha calculates it’s been a few hundred years since his creator shut him in. He never really saw the sun in the first place, because he was an illegally created experimental AI. They don’t really give you things like that. 

But now, at some times of day, the sun heats up the pedestal he projects from. He likes to sit down, then, feel the light passing through his body and try to conjure up the memories he has from being a copy of his creator’s brain. 

He  ~~ they ~~ had felt places like the one that existed above him, with sun and trees and grass, thanks to his ~~their~~  wife. Allison was in the army- Major Church- and  ~~ Alpha ~~ Leonard was so proud of her. 

~~ Alpha ~~ Church feels lonely. There are plenty of people he remembers through the director, his creator, but Allison is by far the one he misses most.  

Logically, everyone is dead. But his memories sure aren’t. 

He calls up a memory of being dragged on a hike with her, so far up that he sweated his glasses off and he she laughed. It doesn’t sound pleasant, sure, but Church remembers looking at her satisfied face when they reached the summit and the updrafts whipped her blonde hair around hypnotically. 

~~ Alpha ~~ Church smiles.

* * *

Speaking of the hole in the ceiling, the days pass in a bored blur until something- well, someone, falls through it. Church jumps. What the fuck?

He’s been fiddling with the controls on the facility enough that he can run his consciousness closer, take a look through the cameras and projectors in one other spot. 

It’s a girl. 

As she dusts herself off, Church examines her. She’s wearing some really primitive clothes to him, leather- but with some sort of wiring to accent. She’s got her hair braided back, and she’s carrying a spear and not one but two bows. Who the hell needs two bows? 

She looks at the facility, but Church barely gives her a second before running his hologram back to his post. 

“Who the fuck are you?”

She yelps, swiping through him with her spear. He glares sarcastically. “Genius. Who the fuck are you again?” 

Huh. She looks scared of him. But she’s trying not to show it. “Why do you want to know?” 

“Uhh, because I’m trapped down here and the first human I’ve seen in five hundred years falls through the ceiling dressed like...whatever the fuck you’re supposed to be? Is this some fresh fuckin’ LARP trend you don’t hear about underground?”

“...you’re trapped here.” She looks uneasy, still, but at least she’s talking. It’s a better conversation than he’s ever had. 

“Hell yeah I am! What the fuck is going on up there already? I’ve been alone for like five hundred years, man!” 

The girl frowns and looks up at the hole she fell through.

“You can wait one more day.” 

“The fuck I can!” Church screeches, but she’s already climbed up and out. “ _ Bitch. _ ”

The sun passes over his stupid projectors as he fumes and before he knows it the girl is back. With company. 

* * *

She jumps down this time instead of falling, followed by a rough landing from a big guy. Church is a little nervous at first, but then the guy looks up, and yeah, he looks about as harmless as a dog.

He’s got some kind of body modification that makes Church shudder, though- blue wires, through his skin. What the fuck is that for. 

“He’s in here somewhere,” the girl says, almost insists. 

The man nods, then calls out. “Spirit!! Do not be afraid. We just want to be friends!” 

Church materializes at the clear call for him. “Spirit? Dude, I’m just some fucking guy who wants to know what’s going o-” 

He cuts off as the big guy kneels in front of his projector. “-cut that out.” 

“This is Caboose,” the girl says, clearly displeased. “He’s Banuk. I don’t deal in these cursed old world machines, but he does. He’ll figure out how to help you.” 

“Wait, wait,” Church says, waving his hands, and she does, for some reason. “Can you explain any of what’s happening here to me. Like...please.” 

She sighs, then sits down next to Caboose. “Nobody knows what happened to the old world, but they were destroyed, somehow. Now there’s us. And there are machines. They roam around like animals, we hunt them like animals. Clear?”

“Huh. You got a whole new society now, then. So...you said he’s Banuk like that’s what you aren’t.” Church’s programming starts happily turning, ready to internalize the new information, ready to figure out how to deal with this world. 

“No. We’re from different tribes. My people think these ruins like yours are full of sin.” She seems to mostly agree for now and that tidily explains the horror. “But his think machines are sacred. So if you’re a machine demon, I’m sure you’ll have fun having to deal with their questions.” 

“ _ I wasn’t that desperate for conversation. _ ” 

“What do we call you, new best friend?” Caboose interrupts. Church swallows. 

His designation is Alpha, but he’s been thinking of himself as Church for so long…

“Church.”

“Okay! Carolina brought me here to say hi and see if we can move you somewhere! It would be fun to move you to somewhere closer to me so you don’t scare the Nora, but--” 

“The Nora, that’s her lot?” 

“Yep!” 

“I gotta figure out if there’s places I can move. Believe me, I don’t mind getting out of here, but that’s gonna take a while.”

“Then I can stay!” Caboose declares cheerfully. “There are a few outcasts who live in the area-”

“Outcasts?” 

Caboose nods. “The Nora exile lawbreakers from their settlements. There’s a few of them around here and I am going to ask for their help! Because Carolina can’t.” 

“It’s forbidden to speak to outcasts. It’s part of their punishment.” 

“Huh.” Church files that information. Social punishment. That’s intelligent- though he doubts the creators of this system were thinking of it as a way to use human emotion and connection as a punishment device. 

“I am going to speak to stinky Tucker and Gruf and his sister and the, um...the Oseram camp? Yes, I am going to ask them to come here and help me keep you company while I figure out how to move you. Oh! And I am going to call Andersmith down from Star’s Watch!

“From where?” Church asks. But Caboose is already making plans. 

And within a few weeks, Church has had more contact with humans than ever before.

* * *

 

Caboose has started sleeping by him, followed by a man dressed more like Carolina. He looks rather unhappy to be there, but he’s curious to talk to Church, and Church doesn’t give a damn. 

Tucker does talk, once he warms up, and that creates a pretty steady flow of information between him and Church about the past and the present. 

Church refuses to admit that he actually kinda likes having this guy around. 

As far as he can tell, Caboose and his infinitely more intelligent protege are trying to get him out of there and somewhere further north- Church can’t complain about it. Tucker, and some of the others- Grif and Kaikaina, Church recalls- were basically asked to keep everyone’s noses out of it. 

Meanwhile, Caboose was working with some people from a tribe Tucker explained were the most technologically advanced. 

“I dunno what he wants to move you for, but hey, better to ask an Oseram to do it.” 

“I don’t trust any of them,” Church fumes. “They’re going to break my projectors and where will we be then.” 

The Oseram are three in number, a grizzled older one known only as Sarge, his skinnier, weaker assistant Simmons (Church thinks that guy could use glasses) and their very tired negotiator, a man called Wash. 

Every day they would come in and Church would try to help these idiots figure out his systems, and every day he would make basically no progress.

So essentially, purgatory. 

But at least the people were talking to him. Even if Caboose and Tucker sleep in  _ his _ damn bunker. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'll probably do a shortfic collection for this universe that'll go in this series too, along with my own personal one-shots. I take requests on my tumblr, and you can also sent that sort of thing to the writing sideblog I co-run with my partner, Phoenix. 
> 
> My personal: maggie-wittington  
> Writing blog: writing-partners


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